Elizabeth Holmes once represented everything women were told they could become. As the founder of Theranos, a health technology company that promised to revolutionize blood testing, Holmes became a symbol of female ambition in an industry dominated by men. She was young, confident, and determined to prove that a woman could build something extraordinary. For many people, her success initially felt like a victory for women everywhere. Yet when Theranos collapsed under the weight of its deception, Holmes became an example of how one woman’s actions can damage the opportunities and reputations of others. Ironically, someone who appeared to be breaking barriers for women may have helped reinforce them instead. With the recent release of A24’s documentary You Can See Everything, Holmes’ scandal feels especially relevant to criticize.
Part of what makes Holmes’s story so complicated is that it is difficult to simply hate her as a woman. Her ambition is understandable. Women have spent generations fighting to be taken seriously in business, science, and technology, and Holmes seemed determined to prove that she belonged. It is possible that she genuinely believed her invention would eventually work and that she simply needed more time to make her vision a reality. Perhaps she became so invested in her idea that she convinced herself success was inevitable. There is something understandable about wanting something so badly that you struggle to accept the possibility of failure. However, there is a significant difference between believing in an idea and misleading people about whether that idea actually works.
Holmes’s actions had consequences far beyond her own career. Theranos promised that it could perform numerous blood tests using only a few drops of blood, but its technology could not consistently deliver what the company claimed. Patients received unreliable test results that could lead to incorrect medical assessments and unnecessary fear or treatment decisions. These were not simply business setbacks. They involved people’s health and their ability to make informed decisions about their own bodies. Former Theranos scientist Ian Gibbons also died by suicide in 2013 amid the professional and legal turmoil surrounding the company. Although his death cannot fairly be attributed directly to Holmes, his experience highlights the intense pressures and human costs associated with Theranos’s internal environment. The people affected by the company’s actions were not characters in Holmes’s success story. They were real people whose lives mattered just as much as her dream.
This is where sympathy for Holmes becomes difficult to maintain. Even if she truly believed she could eventually deliver what she promised, she had a responsibility to be honest about the limitations of her technology. Innovation involves failure, and there is nothing wrong with developing an idea that does not work the first time. The problem is pretending that it does work when people’s health, money, and trust are at stake. Holmes had opportunities to acknowledge the truth, but she continued making misleading claims about Theranos. Her determination to succeed ultimately appeared to matter more than the people who could be harmed along the way. That is what makes her actions morally troubling. Her ambition was understandable, but her willingness to put that ambition ahead of others demonstrated a serious lack of moral judgment.
Holmes’s downfall also created another obstacle for women trying to succeed in male-dominated industries. Before the scandal, she was celebrated as evidence that women could lead major technology companies. Afterward, her story became a cautionary tale that could reinforce existing stereotypes about women being less trustworthy or capable leaders. Male executives who commit fraud are not necessarily treated as representatives of their entire gender, yet a highly publicized female founder can become a symbol of female failure. Women who had nothing to do with Theranos were left navigating the consequences of a scandal they did not create. Female entrepreneurs already face challenges securing funding and earning investors’ confidence, and Holmes’s actions risked making those challenges even harder.
There is also a difference between empowering women and simply celebrating a woman who becomes powerful. Holmes’s rise was treated as a victory for female representation, but having a woman at the top does not automatically mean progress for women as a whole. Real empowerment requires honesty, responsibility, and a commitment to creating opportunities that others can follow. Holmes may have wanted to prove that women could change the world, but her actions undermined the credibility of other women working to make meaningful contributions in science, medicine, and business. Her story demonstrates that representation alone is not enough. What leaders do with their power matters just as much as who gets the opportunity to hold it.
Holmes wanted to prove that women could reach the highest levels of success, yet she risked making it harder for other women to get there. Her story should not be used as evidence that women are incapable of leadership. Instead, it should remind us that ambition without accountability can become destructive, regardless of who possesses it. The real failure was not that a woman attempted something extraordinary and fell short. It was that, in her pursuit of success, Holmes continued making choices that put other people at risk. She may have wanted to break the glass ceiling, but by prioritizing her own vision over the people who trusted her, she helped reinforce some of the very barriers she appeared to be fighting against.